At the Mountains of Madness

by
H.P. Lovecraft

96 ratings, 14 reviews

At the Mountains of Madness is a novella by H.P. Lovecraft, an American writer of "cosmic" horror, fantasy and sci-fi, particularly in the subgenre known as "weird fiction." Weird fiction incorporated the supernatural, mythical, and scientific into a unique form which predated "niche" genre fiction. This story, which was originally serialized in 1936, features the "de-mythology" of the Cthulhu mythos, which describe ancient extra-dimensional beings whose powers are vast and terrifying. It is told from the perspective of William Dyer, a geologist and professor at Miskatonic University. His manuscript reveals the horrible secrets of "The Old Ones" in an attempt to deter a highly-publicized expedition to Antarctica.

Lovecraft's brilliance as a horror writer lies in his defiance of the old standards of ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. It's the peripheral description of his creatures, rather, whose powers are almost unimaginable, that leave the reader with a cosmic, spiritual and intellectual sense of doom. For example, that which makes the creature in this tale so horrifying is their arbitrary loathing of humankind - they couldn't care less whether we lived or died; but much like a puny bug, if we get in their way we will be killed without a thought. No silver bullets, no crosses, no wooden stakes will save you from terrifying creatures of the Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" fiction.

Downloads on Classicly are completely free- these books are public domain.

My second fave from this author, the first being the short tale "The color out of space". Love horror? You need this.

Casey
Clevenger

February 06, 2014

This book looks awsomes

Phoebe
Giles

January 03, 2014

Brilliant book! Have read this 8 times!

Jacob
Rothmel

December 25, 2013

Fantastic story, expertly written and flawlessly executed. The formatting for small screen sizes (iphone 4) caused some weird spacing issues but nothing big enough to detract from the story.

Mike
Morgado

December 02, 2013

Ugh

Laura
Craig

September 20, 2013

One of the greatest novellas of all time beautifully written with a terrifying conclusion far superior to Poe great use of language building to a horrifying conclusion it is interesting to note that lovecraft had a genuine aversion to low temperatures and this aversion and terror is used to great affect in this novella it is a tense claustrophobic story with the actual horror never described as such at the end it is left more to the readers imagination which is more potent a real classic

Steve
Bailey

August 31, 2013

Unmissable horror

PJ
Houser

June 22, 2013

Interesting writing, narrator is frustratingly verbose and instead of showing his terror through the story and other means, repeatedly states how each moment is so horrifying. By the end, the word horror means nothing because everything is horrifying according to the narrator. Hoping that this is Lovecraft's depiction of the narrator and not his writing style for all his works. I will admit i found the story exciting minus the obnoxious storytelling. Many parts are inadvertently funny - the exaggerated emotions and the creative monsters.

Ellis
Hopkins

April 22, 2013

H. P. lovecraft is just fab

Samstravels
Abroad

April 16, 2013

I am not usually into these kind of books. However, I found that I was unable to put it down and read it all within a day. The author has a very detailed imagination. I enjoyed it very much!

Assy
McGee

April 12, 2013

Gayyy

Faith
Choo

September 06, 2012

Very intricately written tale of discovery, terror and madness. The descriptions are so detailed it is almost as if the author experienced it himself. Magical and spell-binding novel, I really enjoyed reading it.